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Trump's FCC Chairman Pick Ajit Pai Vows To Close Broadband 'Digital Divide' (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On his first full day as Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Republican Ajit Pai yesterday spoke to FCC staff and said one of his top priorities will be bringing broadband to all Americans. "One of the most significant things that I've seen during my time here is that there is a digital divide in this country -- between those who can use cutting-edge communications services and those who do not," Pai said (transcript). "I believe one of our core priorities going forward should be to close that divide -- to do what's necessary to help the private sector build networks, send signals, and distribute information to American consumers, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else. We must work to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans." Pai promised to "hear all points of view -- to approach every issue with a literal open door and a figurative open mind," as the FCC "confronts this and many other challenges." Pai didn't offer any specific initiatives for closing the digital divide yesterday, but in September 2016 he outlined a "digital empowerment agenda." The plan included "remov[ing] regulatory barriers to broadband deployment," changes to pole attachment rules, and "dig once" policies that install broadband conduit when roads are dug up during any road and highway construction project. He also proposed setting aside 10 percent of spectrum auction proceeds for deployment of mobile broadband in rural areas. Pai suggested requiring mobile carriers to build out service to 95 percent of the population in areas where they have spectrum licenses; he noted that some licenses only required service for 66 percent or 75 percent of residents, a problem in sparsely populated rural areas. At the same time, he proposed extending initial spectrum license terms from 10 years to 15 years to give the carriers more time to complete the construction. Pai also proposed creating "gigabit opportunity zones" in areas where average household income is below 75 percent of the national median. In these areas, state and local lawmakers would have to "adopt streamlined, broadband deployment-friendly policies," and there would be tax incentives and tax credits for companies building high-speed networks.
And just how many Mbps is this "Broadband" from the a Trumpists point of view?
So, it will be available in more areas, at greater costs and in more limited uses.
See, I "expanded access".
Now, fork over the $300 a month.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, we want to bring broadband to all Americans... so my ex-clients can gouge the shit out of them with rent-seeking behavior, unneeded service caps and fees, and charging content providers that aren't directly owned by the ISP access fees after we shitcan Net Neutrality!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Hopefully they build a wall around the fcc
Use them.
>"On his first full day as Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Republican Ajit Pai yesterday spoke to FCC staff and said one of his top priorities will be bringing broadband to all Americans. [...] regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else. "
OK, so waiting for the media (and some Slashdotters) to start twisting around what was said. How DARE a Republican, much less a new Trump appointment, say something like that! Certainly it must be a misquote, a conspiracy, or have evil motives...
1) Stop the price gouging and the retaliation tactics that ISP's are doing against the cord cutters/netflix migrators.
2) Stop monopolies and either allow choice so prices remain low or there is at least checks and balances. Throw out the lobbyists.
3) Stop companies like comcast saying that they are under the strain if they don't do x, y or z. It is crap. Comcast, Century link and others are just too cheap to upgrade any equipment and they will do and say anything, lie cheat and steal before they are forced too.
5) Allow community/towns themselves to setup gigabit/internet offering. I have a town near me that is rolling it out and prices are cheap and get gig speeds. Yet I am just literally 5 miles south and I pay double the price for a fraction of that gig speed. If the town can do it at a good price point then there is no excuse.
No American should have to chose between 128K ISDN and their EpiPen(tm).
So, it will be available in more areas, at greater costs and in more limited uses.
First, I reject the assumption it will cost a lot more.
Secondly, so what if it does cost more? Is it still not better to have the AVAILABILITY of real high speed internet be much more widespread? My mother lives in a rural area, and on average from her DSL line she was getting 128kb/s. No I am not joking. Do you know how much of the modern internet is really usable at those speeds? Not much, and Netflix was a pretty low quality affair.
Recently T-Mobile expanded cell service enough in the area that I was able to get her a wireless hotspot. Now she has about 8MB/s down, and everything is useable... she has more of a cap than before but then again she probably couldn't have downloaded even a GB in the course of a month before had she tried.
Making something available is a huge boon. Even if it is expensive that simply means you can subsidize the payments for those that could not afford it otherwise - either the government or private groups. But there's no reason to believe once something is available and widely used that prices will not come down.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To roar no moar.
I preferred Obama, who just talked about stuff like this and didn't do anything. That was much better than having greedy evil companies providing services to the less privileged.
Well... Obamacare / Insurance Companies. Just sayin'
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let them eat data caps.
Yeah, I bet the Trump administration will make that a priority.
That's the thing. Just being able to get the service is enough. From there even if local or federal governments will not help subsidize network fees, private groups can and will.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, we want to bring broadband to all Americans... so my ex-clients can gouge the shit out of them with rent-seeking behavior, unneeded service caps and fees, and charging content providers that aren't directly owned by the ISP access fees after we shitcan Net Neutrality!
The announcement appears to be better than the current situation in every possible way.
It is also better in the first week than the previous administration over 8 years, and better than the alternative [candidate] would have done. ...and yet lefties have to invent a fictional inner voice just so they can pour derision on the situation.
Maybe we should keep a small segment of the Obama administration in charge of something just to let everyone know how "stay the course" would have worked.
The lefties can't possibly take the announcement at face value, they would have to concede that the current administration is doing something right.
What's he going to do about the lack of PokeStops in my neighborhood?
I'm all in favor of this, since I think expanding access will help lots of people in poorly connected communities. What concerns me, though, is that Mr Pai is an opponent of Net Neutrality, the abolition of which would harm many people across the whole country.
Pai was appointed to the commission by Obama in 2012, so we can answer that based on what he's supported and opposed over the last five years.
In his dissents, Pai has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the commission setting minimums with no reference to changing technology and consumer expectations. He supports looking at the speeds actually ordered by consumers who *do* have the choice, and setting new rules based on that, rather than picking a number out of a bureaucrat's ass - and using completely different numbers from month to month.
Available speeds have increased in the last couple of years, so by the chairman's preferred methodology standards should be higher now than in 2015, but in 2015 he said the commission's standard of 10 Mbps in rural areas was too slow, arguing that 25 Mbps would be better:
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...
Before that, he reasoned that since Netflix customers stream at 3.2 Mbps on average, a true 10 Mbps connection would allow 3 concurrent streams - so here we see his idea of "broadband" gets faster over time.
The new chairman argued strenuously that the FCC should not adopt regulations that discouraged gigabit - the rule enacted by the Democrat majority encouraged 10Mbps and 25Mbps connections in lieu of gigabit, he argued.
He would in general rather promote competition and then gtf out of the way and let companies offer gigabit or whatever, rather than micro-managing, declaring that they must offer exactly this or that. In constrast, the rules enacted by his colleagues were much more along the lines of "Verizon must offer 10 Mbps DSL in these areas" kinds of rules. (Of course the rule is written as "an incumbent telco carrier operating blah blah blah", a description which describes only Verizon).
Anyway, to answer your question, his position is that 10 Mbps was too slow in 2015, it should have been 25 Mbps back then, and it should get faster with time based on what consumers who have the choice actually select.
So he'll be closing the divide. By slowing down Internet for ones who still have fast connections.
This is the same guy who just a few days ago said eliminating regulations like net neutrality will result in more jobs,
Fewer regulations mean more freedom for companies to try different approaches to providing network services. That in turn, obviously means more jobs... and is better for consumers.
Net Neutrality was always a smokescreen dedicated to keeping the Comcasts of the world in control of providing network services, With that death grip loosened prices will fall and consumers will benefit. Take a look in four years and see if the broadband situation in the U.S. has not improved.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If Pai is truly a believer in free market and competition, then don't stop at just knocking down net neutrality. Remove the regional monopolies that restrict where existing ISP's can and cannot do business. Remove roadblocks to cities building municipal fiber, since this only creates more competition so long as they're on a level playing field with private ISP's. Lift restrictions on last mile unbundling so that more companies can enter the market and offer competing services.
The fact is net neutrality was such a necessity only because there are few players in the market and limited choice for consumers. Who cares if ISP's can create fast lanes and throttle non-partnered content if I have a list of 20 ISP's with broadband speeds to choose from, since there will always be those whose model is to offer a more open package, even if it is at a higher price. The ISP's are crying about regulation, but only when it's regulations on what they can do. Once you talk about remove regulations on what their competitors can do, suddenly these restrictions need to be upheld. Because if you gave the average Comcast customer the option to choose another ISP with better customer service, no data caps, and more transparent billing practices they'd take it in a heartbeat, even if meant an increase in monthly price.
If Pai truly walks his talk and heavily deregulates the industry by removing barriers to entry and regional monopolies in addition to net neutrality, he'll be a far better FCC Commissioner than Wheeler ever was. If however he's yet another industry talking head who's only interested in removing consumer protections while still leaving in place industry friendly regulation, then nothing good will come from his chairmanship.
...and there would be tax incentives and tax credits for companies building high-speed networks.
Translation: "Let's give billions more taxpayer dollars to the worthless telecoms/cable companies."
So the big boys will be able to lock out competition and do whatever they want. Sweet.
This will be a good thing. I like good things. More good things please.
Isn't that what FCC has been *trying* to do, but has been blocked at every possible avenue, if not by corporations, then by congress, who have stated that FCC is exceeding it's authority?
And hasn't Trump stated that he is uncategorically nixing Net Neutrality?
Based on all the other actions that have occurred in just the last few days, I have serious doubts that what the US consumer gets will be in their best interests.
That's what I noticed as conspicuously absent. Not only that he specifically mentioned paying the 'private sector' to do it.
If he really cared about Americans, then it wouldn't matter who was building this out...just that it was getting built out. If the municipality can beat the private sector to market...then they win, and the 'Americans' win.
People don't vote to fund 'public broadband' initiatives if they feel they are being fairly and adequately served by the private Telcos.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
like Electricity, Gas or water, only with actual competition, no more being monopolized by the cable company and/or phone company then when city, county and/or state gov can sell fiber to the door at a nominal fee
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Wow. I've got to say, this is the first time I'm actually impressed by a Trump appointment.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
25Mbps sounds like a dream. I get 75K max on my rural connection
The good news is that everyone will have access to broadband. The bad news is that the only content will be a single Twitter account.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem here is that the federal government just doesn't have much control over many of these regulation, as they are mostly down to state and local regulations. At the federal level, then, implementing these policies as Pai describes isn't just about removing regulations: it's about increased regulations of the states, something that Republicans have been historically against, and which may open the way for court challenges.
I also worry that he explicitly mentions private industry, but doesn't appear to care about the deployment of public broadband (an effort which has begun in many communities, but is often stymied by state laws implemented as a result of telecom lobbying).
My big worry here is that these claims are a smokescreen. He doesn't actually want to regulate states more strongly. He wants to remove federal regulations related to the Internet, such as the 2015 net neutrality rules. For some of the things that Pai has opposed, see here. If he follows previous patterns, his effort will decrease competition, increase prices, and not make the slightest dent in broadband speeds.
So the big boys will be able to lock out competition and do whatever they want. Sweet.
What you describe is the current status quo, enabled by the current regulations.
If nothing changes then nothing changes, but you want to keep the current regulations which enable the status quo and yet expect things will change?
Excellent doublethink, citizen! Big Brother would be proud!
" one of our core priorities going forward should be to close that divide"
" to do what's necessary to help the private sector build networks"
These seem contradictory.
The private sector has been dragging their feet and risk of muni-broadband competition has been spurring them to action.
If a community wants to put in their own network, why should it be limited by an entitlement for the private sector?
He was appointed to the commission by Obama in 2012, so we know what his positions on municipal broadband are. Basically, he thinks the FCC should get out of the way and let states and cities do muni broadband if they wish - Congress has made no law requiring states to deploy it, allow it, or disalow it. The FCC should enforce the law, not make the law, and there is no federal law on the subject pf muni broadband for the FCC to endorce.
The Tennessee case is instructive. The state, under their Constitutional authority, empowered TVA to provide broadband *within their service area*. That's cool, he said. He made it a point to be clear that he neither opposed nor supported the project - Tennessee could have muni broadband if they want, up to them.
The FCC, then controlled by Democrats, decided they were going to override the law passed by the (Democrat) legislature and say that TVA was to provide broadband service *outside* of their designated service area.
Pai pointed to two issues -the courts had already ruled that the FCC doesn't have the power to override state law
without a clear mandate from Congress to do so in the particular subject at issue. That is, FCC can't make law on it's own, Congress makes law and Congress had not authorized the FCC to do what they were doing.
Secondly, the courts had also ruled that even if Congress did decide to override Tennessee law, there would have to be a careful Constitutional balance. The Constitutional grants a specific list of powers to the federal government, and reserves all other powers to the states. In fact, the Constitution repeats itself on that last point - all other powers are reserved to the states (including the power to deploy, fund, or regulate municipal broadband). Unless and until Congress passed on a law on the matter which courts could review for Constitutionality, the FCC had no legal power to interfere with municipal broadband either way.
Pay more for sites I already access as a consumer when rates are already raised on a yearly basis? And on top of data caps?
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2010-12-15-net_neutrality_loses_whatif.jpg
Translation: "We will be giving out another run of YUUUUGE chunks of money to telcos to roll out rural broadband, which they again will choose not to do. We will never demand our billions of dollars back for the service they contracted to do but refused to provide. Just like last time"
Right. Especially since he was originally an Obama appointee--which you'd expect would have gotten him fired, not promoted.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
I have been looking forward to the intersection between populist appeal and progressive reform!! About time we get our sweet stuff instead of blowing it up in the desert! I am jazzed. Awesome!! Maybe for his next trick Trump will destroy the evil and much hated cartel of telecom companies!
Right. Especially since he was originally an Obama appointee--which you'd expect would have gotten him fired, not promoted.
But how are we going to afford all this if we are going to borrow another $38 billion for a semi useless wall?
link
While he sounds to have a decent plan, actually getting it done is another thing, and just because he wasn't fired, doesn't mean that won't change. Also he is not a fan of net neutrality. link
Maybe we will somehow get broadband, but have to pay $999999 a month if we want the non right wing wacko pack?
Trump is not especially concerned about his base any more. He's mostly concerned about what the majority in congress wants.
Trump has been impeachable from day one, and he knows it. His VP is a Republican rubber stamper, and most of the Republicans in congress would rather have Pence as president than him. So Trump is busy proving how conservative he is, so as not to get impeached.
If the majority of Republicans in congress want this, then he does.
But how are we going to afford all this if we are going to borrow another $38 billion for a semi useless wall?
Run the printing presses - DUH!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But how are we going to afford all this if we are going to borrow another $38 billion for a semi useless wall?
Sorry to reply again, but anyone that thinks we can build an almost 2000 mile wall that extends into the ert so them imgrunts can't dig tunnels under it for 38 billion dollars is laughingly uneducated.
We couldn't build it for that much if we used illegal immigrants to build it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Net Neutrality passed - but as worded benefitted the telecoms. That's all Network Neutrality ever was (the FCC version anyway) a giant bloated document meant to keep a stranglehold of power by the major players.
Everything the FCC did under his reign benefitted incumbent ISP's greatly. Now that someone is coming in actually open to choice, you'll see lower prices and more choices of ISP (though that will take a few years to percolate through).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't care about fair. It always ends up with everyone getting less than what they would get if they just went after the best they could get without regards to fairness.
But how are we going to afford all this if we are going to borrow another $38 billion for a semi useless wall?
Sorry to reply again, but anyone that thinks we can build an almost 2000 mile wall that extends into the ert so them imgrunts can't dig tunnels under it for 38 billion dollars is laughingly uneducated.
We couldn't build it for that much if we used illegal immigrants to build it.
The link allowed you to select how deep you made the wall below ground. That being said, I agree that it is a waste of money, particularly if your trying to stop the drug trade. There is too much profit to be stopped by Trump's ego.
All that being said, if Trump's American's want a wall, then Trump's American's should pay for it. I voted for the sane candidate. Let's see, assuming the cost is really 50Billion, or hell, let's make the math easy, assuming that it is 62 or so billion, so that every voter for Trump owes $1k. That sounds fair to me. Of course, in practice you'd have to divide it among the trump voters who actually pay taxes, so I'm guessing it would be closer to $2k, but who knows.
zero competition from the socialists
Or from capitalists. Or from anyone...
That is not capitalism, and the companies that have unnatural monopolies grated by the state or feds have acted just as you would expect a lazy large company with competition eliminated by law to act. That is to say, not at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lulz. OK tell me how effective my broadband is going to be when you cut net neutrality rules and I can only watch the Trump facts report with any decent speed.
It's going to be approx. the same bullshit as Obamacare, except for broadband. I wonder what the IRS tax penalty is going to be for not having Internet access?
Sorry, who the FUCK was the sane candidate? Because it wasn't Trump or Clinton.
The link allowed you to select how deep you made the wall below ground. That being said, I agree that it is a waste of money, particularly if your trying to stop the drug trade. There is too much profit to be stopped by Trump's ego.
All that being said, if Trump's American's want a wall, then Trump's American's should pay for it.
Maybe by using the coal mining money.
This will probably work as well as the Berlin Wall which operated on the same ideology. And as likely as not will beet the same end.
As well, this will probably work as well as the Maginot line, another fine wall time system. Walls just don't work that well.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sorry, who the FUCK was the sane candidate? Because it wasn't Trump or Clinton.
We hear that a lot. Sanders was obviously the least dislikable. I watched him on a few talk shows, and he's a real charming guy. Probably would have made a great President. A little too socialist for my liking, but he understands how to make things work. But there was a choice, and it was pretty clear. A minority of the 49 percent of eligible voters that bothered to show up chose Trump, and he won by a weird quirk of our election system. I hope he gives us everything he promised, and that his party succeeds in averything they attempt to do. My biggest hope is that his supporters lose their Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Social Security. Fortunately I don't need any of those, so it is no skin off my nose. It's kind of funny, the old folk supporters of his who frequent the eatery I go to for breakfast were really loud and cheerful the day after the election. Now they are very quiet, very quiet indeed. Whispering and worried.
But what we had was what we had. If you didn't vote for Clinton, or voted for anyone else, you got Trump. We get the leaders we deserve.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How much money do you think was spent on Saturday during the "catharic" march to nowhere? Trumps people don't look as bad after saturaday.
All FCC commissioners are presidential appointees, but only three of those are allowed to be from the president's party. You might think that the president would seek out sympathetic members of the opposing party, but since they're in a minority, and so don't have a lot of power, and since all of the commissioners need to be approved by the senate (and to maintain the appearance of bipartisanship), the two minority commissioners are typically opposition party mainliners.
In other words, the fact that Obama appointed this guy means nothing. Also, all this nice talk about closing the "digital divide" is just a prelude to saying that regulations are what are really holding us back from a digital utopia and that gutting net neutrality is the only real answer. Ajit Pai has been consistently against net neutrality and against reclassifying ISPs as Title II Common Carriers.
Sir, we are glad to let you know from today on, the 10Mbps switch currently installed in your area which is also happily serving the other 20k people in your neighbourhood is finally connected to this amazing multi-Gbps broadband line your Government generously offered to eliminate digital divide. Enjoy your super high speed internet access!
He would in general rather promote competition and then gtf out of the way and let companies offer gigabit or whatever
The problem is that to promote competition, you have to do things like force networks to be opened up or make access to utility poles mandatory and cheap. In other words, heavy regulation.
This is because broadband is something of a natural monopoly. It's very expensive to install infrastructure for the last mile, and many places don't want 5 different companies installing five different poles in the same location. There is very little incentive to offer new services in an area already served by someone else, with a few exceptions like Google Fibre where it's basically a way to promote other parts of the business.
Perhaps publicly owned networks could help, but that's not normally considered "competition" as such, because being non-profit it's kinda hard for companies to compete with. It's more like "you have failed this city, so we are going to make your business redundant", which is fair enough but I doubt it's what he has in mind.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"I believe one of our core priorities going forward should be to close that divide -- to do what's necessary to help the private sector build networks, send signals, and distribute information to American consumers, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else. We must work to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans."
And here I thought virtue signalling was a trademark of the regressive left. Pai certainly is slathering it rather heavy on both sides.
I do wonder how exactly he intends to follow through on this.
Will telcos now require that customers write their sexual preferences and religion on the registration form? How else can Pai be sure that no one is getting discriminated in throwing money at the local monopoly?
Has anybody else noticed the same people complaining about the government collecting data on them want the government to setup broadband internet for them? I personally don't want the government to be able to siphon everything easier than they already can. But don't you think if they provide the service their not going to log all activity from day one?
I take offense at you calling it a semi useless wall. It is totally useless, even as a monument to Trump's ego.
The fastest way to get broadband to everyone is municipal fiber...something the conservatives fight at every corner. Key is to get competition for for-profit companies. Right now, there is no incentive for them to expand the network, upgrade tech, or lower prices as most of them operate as quasi monopolies in their region and at best have only one competitor. In Europe we can get three times the bandwidth at a third of a cost with significantly lower latency. Also, connections are way more stable because infrastructure is not nailed to crooked poles like in the Edison days.
How much money do you think was spent on Saturday during the "catharic" march to nowhere? Trumps people don't look as bad after saturaday.
Are you really that big an imbecile? They were marching to draw attention to women's rights. It was also pointed out how much they for the most part hated Trump. They accomplished both goals. Also what does the women's march have to do with Trump's people looking better? Trump's people fell for and keep falling for Don the Con. The women and men were marching for an actual good cause.
I wouldn't call the Women's March useless. It would have been worth more before the election, but certainly not useless. Now if only we can have a march like that every month...
to do what's necessary to help the private sector build networks, send signals, and distribute information to American consumers, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else.
About time. For decades, the homosexual broadband tier has lagged far behind the rest of the nation.
Don't be.
He also opposes net neutrality.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I misspoke. TVA defined the service area of EPB. The state of Tennessee passed a law saying municipal power providers such as EPB could provide internet service within their service areas.
The FCC purported to rewrite Tennessee law on the matter. Pai pointed put that the FCC has no lawful power to do so. The court agreed, the FCC has no such power.
The same is true of wireless phones - it's redundant to have three or four companies put up towers covering the same area, but we do, and there's competion. Every year phone networks get faster and companies like Sprint, Cricket, T-Mobile, and Boost compete for business. Redundant towers is an inefficiency, but that's better than a monopoly.
In many parts of Texas, including where I live, we have electric power providers to choose from, offering different plans. Some offer free nights and weekends, etc. In some areas of Texas, we have four or five internet service providers to choose from. Yes, there is some inefficiency, and there's competition.
Actually there's redundancy and inefficiency to having more than one airline, more than one bank, etc, too, but that seems to have worked better than the government-controlled providers they tried in Cuba, the USSR, etc. Almost all the countries that tried that approach of government-controlled businesses rather than competition have given up on the idea, because it didn't work well.
They were marching to draw attention to women's rights
What right do women not have? I sure as hell didn't see much about the rights of women in places like Saudi Arabia. What am I supposed to think needs to be done about the most privileged group of people on the planet when you say 'draw attention to women's rights'?
I don't get it. I honestly don't. How many more entitlements do those women need to be happy?
Now if only we can have a march like that every month...
That's sexist. It is a natural biological process that should not be mocked. Period.
...and follow the blood trail!
Well, he already saved a billion on the Airforce One contract with Boeing and that was negotiating before he was even signed in.
You are view Trump and money in terms of previews politicians and how they view money.
You know, we've been coming here giving you food for about 35 years now and we were driving through the desert, and we realized there wouldn't BE world hunger if you people would live where the FOOD IS! YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT! We have deserts in America, we just don't live in them, assholes!
Because net neutrality is great in theory but not so great in the way people want it implemented.
For example - all the people going after T-Mobile for offering "binge" services. They didn't drop the amount of GB people could download but they made some deals with content providers to offset the cost for some services and are able to offer them to the end-user at now data charge. But this is a bad thing because net neutrality is such a broad idea that it destroys companies ability to make deals like this.
It would be like fining Disney for licensing some shows to netflix but not amazon.
t's very expensive to install infrastructure for the last mile, and many places don't want 5 different companies installing five different poles in the same location.
And these would be places that are choosing to deal with one company.
I'm building this shitty wall to keep these shitty Mongolians out.
Welcome to shitty wok, how many I help yew.
Odd wording. Broadband is not denied to people on those grounds, it's because they reside in an area where the infrastructure just isn't in place yet (generally for financial, ROI reasons - poor neighborhoods are poor). This reads like I've had broadband but my next door neighbor was denied it because she's a woman; or Brazilian, or gay, or Buddhist, or some combination thereof.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Satellite is the answer folks...
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying that. Sigh--the world might be a much better place, if only the US were a multi-party democracy.
And yes, I know that net neutrality's death warrant was signed when Sanders lost the democratic primary (and is likely never coming back).
But the "digital divide" talk sounded surprisingly progressive for anyone coming from Big Telecom.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
What they fail to mention here is this: There is no way the FCC can give any guarantees here. They can prevent a company from doing something. They can compel a company to do something in a specific way. But what they can't do is to force a privately held company to invest in something that the company cannot expect a reasonable profit from. The private sector is driven by profit and not FCC wishes. And those potential benefactors that are classified as belonging to the divide (in the case here are those in rural areas) will probably not benefit from this very much. Unless of course if our tax dollars are used to build the entire infrastructure, in which case, they would be hard pressed to turn down free money. And naturally, those who cannot afford the service ("regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else") will also be excluded from any benefit.
So the TL;DR version is this, what Ajit Pai is really stating is this: "Nothing will really change except this: we will go ahead and do exactly what you prevented us doing in the past with SOPA and all that whole 'fast lane slow lane' stuff we tried to sell you, all while wrapping it up in another reasonably sounding sales pitch that we hope you will be quietly content with. Oh yea, and we will also be giving more money and tax breaks to the providers".
The federal government can control interstate and foreign commerce, and can supersede state and local laws to do so. This 'commerce clause' has been stretched to cover some pretty dubious cases, but if Internet access isn't legitimately a part of interstate and foreign commerce, I don't know what is.
Arguably, there are problems with this offer, but it's far from the preferential-treatment anti-competitive deals that really get people up in arms about net-neutrality.
Even if your description was accurate, your analogy is still inapt. The licensing agreements between content owners like Disney and content providers like Netflix are a completely different realm to the interactions between content providers and common-carriers. You can license your intellectual property pretty much however you like. A common-carrier must provide service without discrimination for "public convenience and necessity". And that concept goes all the way back to British Common Law.
It was about users being able to go into a mode indicating they wanted to receive compressed video at lower resolutions in exchange for not having it apply to their cap, (or in some cases, using their allotment less quickly). The "deals" made with content providers were contractual agreements, available to every content provider, even the tiniest of startups, at no cost. The agreement with the providers was either 1: do nothing, and if we notice you streaming HD video to a binge-on user, we'll try to compress/reduce it; but user still pays normal data rates. 2: work with us so we can know when data you serve up is streaming video, then we'll compress/reduce it when sending it to Binge-on users, and user gets free bandwidth. 3: Compress/reduce the video yourself, work with us so we can know when you're sending compressed video to binge-on users, and promise that you'll only send decent quality compressed video with binge-on users; and user gets free bandwidth 4: let us know you're opting out and that we shouldn't try to compress your data, regardless of the user requesting video being compressed by nature of being in binge-on mode.
You gave a much better description than I did
Arguably, there are problems with this offer, but it's far from the preferential-treatment anti-competitive deals that really get people up in arms about net-neutrality.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/d...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/to...
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/s...
I believe there is even a few Slashdot article about it as well.
Sounds like we agree; badass. I didn't mean to imply that no one got upset about the thing, just that it's a more subtle net-neutrality violation.
So, over three million people, mostly anti-Trump, marching in what turned out to be very peaceful marches (the DC police did not make one arrest) makes Trump supporters look better? I'd think it would make anti-Trump women look better. Or are you of the opinion that any expression of peaceful strength by women makes Trump supporters look better? Personally, if you want Trump supporters to look better, I'd recommend Vaseline on the lens or possibly a quantity of ethanol.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Towers get shared a lot, no?
Indeed, several antennas can be mounted on one tower, and several lines can be mounted on one telephone pole.